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ut he was laughing: “Do you think I have a cellular phone on board?
You must be crazy, I can’t hear you, I can’t.” She woke up in a panic,
sweating under her armpits, wiped herself with a velour towel, took a
lozenge from the flat Strepsil tin, let it slowly dissolve under her tongue,
at the back of her mouth and quietly went back to sleep. “I’ll call him
tomorrow.”
But she didn’t. She returned to University on Wednesday afternoon,
with hay fever. It was the second last teaching week of this
academic year. Jacques was absent, had cancelled all his classes. A small
note had been cleanly typed and posted by the Secretary, saying he was
ill. The three lines were perfectly centred, like an ad for text processing,
or a poem. She went down to Manning Hall, right opposite the Brennan
Building. His answering machine was on: “This is the residence of Dr
Jacques Voisin. I cannot answer your call personally at this time. Please
leave a message after you hear the beep. —Jacques... I am sorry for last
Sunday. I want to see you, I do.” But did she really? She would have liked
to flunk and desert Sydney, her friends, her family. Not see him again.
She needed him, or he had managed to make her believe that she did.
118
LES TÉMOINS ÉTAIENT loin de se douter que la vie de Jacques
était entrée dans une phase aussi confuse et chaotique.
Ces jours-ci, d’ailleurs, ils ne pensaient guère à lui. Le
cadet de leurs soucis. David Smith luttait contre l’artériosclérose qui lui
causait des trous de mémoire, faisait enfler ses jambes et affaiblissait son
cœur, avec cette vaillance inutile contre l’adversité qu’on inculque aux
Américains dès la maternelle et qui revient toujours les posséder comme
un sectarisme patriotique, surtout quand il s’agit de leur santé et que la
maladie qui va les emporter est entrée dans sa phase terminale.
Maureen Duplantier n’avait pas encore reçu la lettre de Sylvie
dans laquelle celle-ci lui faisait part, incidemment, de la nouvelle conquête
de Jacques. Et, l’eût-elle reçue, il n’aurait eu droit qu’à un petit sourire
entendu ; on savait à quoi s’en tenir sur son compte, ce qui, en typifiant
son image, finissait par lui conférer une innocence non moins superflue
que les fautes dont on avait pu jadis l’accuser. Jean-Pierre s’employait,